Berlin and Paris look East: How close are we to a Common Economic Space?

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a sociologist, award-winning author and geopolitical analyst.
He is the author of The Globalization of NATO, a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, a peer-reviewed journal of geopolitical science in Italy.

Top officials from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus take part in a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union in Astana. (Reuters/Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin) / Reuters

The Eurasian Economic Union is a reality that may end up costing the US its “perch” in Eurasia’s western periphery as a Common Economic Space is formed.

Former US national
security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski averred the following in
1997: “But if the middle space rebuffs the West, becomes an
assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South
or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor, then America’s
primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically. The same would be the
case if the two major Eastern players were somehow to
unite.”

This was a clear warning to the elites in the Washington Beltway
and Wall Street. Camouflaged behind thinly veiled liberal and
academic jargon, what Dr. Brzezinski was saying is that if the
Russian Federation and the post-Soviet space manage to repulse or
push back Western domination—meaning some combination of US and
European Union tutelage —and manage to reorganize themselves
within some type of confederacy or supranational bloc, either
gaining influence in the Middle East and Central Asia or forms an
alliance with China that Washington’s influence in Eurasia would
be finished.

Everything that Brzezinski warned Washington to prevent is in
motion. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)—simply called the
Eurasian Union—has been formed by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan
and Russia. Kyrgyzstan will be acceding into the Eurasian Union
as an EEU member, and Tajikistan is considering joining it too.
The Kremlin and the EEU are actively looking for new partners too.
Countries outside the post-Soviet space, such as Syria, are even interested in joining the EEU and
the Russian-led bloc has already signed an important trade agreement with the Arab juggernaut Egypt. In
Southeast Asia, negotiations with Hanoi have also been
completed and Vietnam is scheduled next to sign an agreement with the
EEU sometime in 2015.

The “Middle Space” is clearly resurgent. Turkey is
looking towards a Eurasian alternative. The Turk Stream natural gas pipeline deal between Ankara
and Moscow has put Washington and the European Commission on
alert. Following the energy and trade agreements with Turkey,
Russia renewed its military ties with Iran and has subsequently
offered Tehran the Antey-2500—Tehran
alongside Moscow was a key player that prevented an open Pentagon
war from being launched on Syria in 2013. Russia’s Defense
Minister Sergey Shoigu and his Iranian counterpart,
Brigadier-General Dehghan, publicly signed agreements in Iran to
renew Russo-Iranian military cooperation on
January 20, 2015. From Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria to Yemen and
Iraq, Russian influence is growing in the Middle East (i.e.
“the South”).

In Latin America, from Argentina and Brazil to Nicaragua and
Venezuela, Russian also influence is rising. The Latin American
regional tour last year by Russian President
Vladimir Putin and one this year by Shoigu have both included military
cooperation talks and led to speculation about the erection of a
network of Russian signals, naval and air bases in the area.
Moreover, the increase in Russian influence and Washington’s
declining weight inside Latin America have both been factors for
Washington’s rapprochement with the Cubans. Moscow’s influence
was present even on the eve of a historic visit to Cuba by a
delegation from the US Congress when the Russian naval ship
Viktor Leonov, an intelligence and signals vessel, docked in Havana on January 20, 2015.

Both the “Middle Space” and the “Middle
Kingdom” (Zhongguo/China) joined forces long ago. This
happened before the formation of the EEU or the EuroMaidan coup
in Ukraine. Moscow and part of the post-Soviet space began
building an alliance with China (i.e. “the major Eastern
actor”) at the bilateral or multilateral levels in the
late-1990s. This has begun blossoming. The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), which was formed out of the Shanghai Five in
2001, is proof of this. The mega Sino-Russian natural gas deal is
merely the fruits of this alliance and the coming together of the
“Middle Space” and the “Middle Kingdom.”

Without Russia, Europe is incomplete by any means or calculation.
The Russia Federation is in both demographic and territorial
terms the largest European country. There is no question about it
either that Moscow is a major political, socioeconomic and
cultural force in European affairs that cannot be overlooked from
the Baltic Sea to the Balkans and the Black Sea.

Economically, Russia is an important export and import market for
the EU and its members. This is why the EU is suffering from the
US-engineered economic sanctions that have been imposed against
Russia as a form of economic warfare. It is in the context of
Russia’s economic importance to the economies of the EU that US
Vice-President Joseph Biden candidly even admitted during a
lecture at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University that Washington had to pressure the EU into accepting the anti-Russian
sanctions regime on October 2, 2014.

Brzezinski’s warning has another angle to it too, which involves
Washington’s EU and NATO partners. “Finally, any ejection of
America by its Western partners from its perch on the western
periphery would automatically spell the end of America’s
participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard, even though
that would probably also mean the eventual subordination of the
western extremity to a revived player occupying the middle
space,” he warns. What the former US official means is that
if the US-aligned major European powers (i.e. France and Germany,
or the EU collectively) reject Washington’s influence (maybe even
withdraw from NATO), the US would lose its western perch in
Eurasia. Brzezinski warns that an assertive Russia—probably
alongside its Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
allies—would instead replace US influence.

The reason that unity in the post-Soviet space and any political
and economic convergences between the EU and the “Middle
Space” are a threat to Washington can be analyzed by using
the standpoint and lexicon of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Under 32
Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square’s framework, Eurasia is partitioned
into three zones or regions: the Euro-Atlantic (western
periphery), Euro-Asia (central area), and the Asia-Pacific
(eastern periphery).Hence, the explanation for the term
“Middle Space” used by Brzezinski to describe the
post-Soviet space.

In organic terms, it is the central Euro-Asia region that can
unite and integrate both the western and eastern Eurasian
peripheries. Russia and the EEU want to ultimately establish a
free trade zone encompassing the entire EU and EEU — a
“Common Economic Space.” In the words of the Russian
Foreign Ministry, the EEU “is designed to serve as an
effective link betweenEurope and the Asia-Pacific region.”

It is Russia and the EEUacting as a bridge between the
twoEurasian peripheries that threatens Washington’s plans to
integrate the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific zones with itself.

The Common Economic space vs. the TTIP and the TPP

The US wants to be the center of gravity in Eurasia. It fears
that the EU could eventually gravitate towards the “Middle
Space” and integrate with Russia and the EEU.

The tensions that Washington is deliberately stoking in Europe
are an attempt to estrange the EU from Moscow as a means of
allowing the continuation of US empire-building in Eurasia — this
is Washington’s version of a modern “Great Game.” Even
Brzezinski’s warning about the resurgence of the “Middle
Space” (i.e., Russia and the post-Soviet space) is about the
area unifying to become “an assertive single entity” and
not even an “aggressive” entity that is a military threat to
world peace.

Washington wants the western periphery (Euro-Atlantic) and
eastern periphery (Asia-Pacific) to integrate with it through the
Trans-Atlantic and Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The EEU and any thoughts of a
Common Economic Space are a threat to the consolidation and
merger of these regions with the US. This is why the US cannot
tolerate an independent and assertive “Middle Space” or,
for that matter, an independent and assertive “Middle
Kingdom.” This is why both Russia and China are being
demonized and targeted: Moscow is being target via the
instability the US has helped author in Ukraine (as well as
through a new wave of Russophobia) whereas Beijing is being
targeted through Washington’s so-called military “Pivot to
Asia.” This has taken place while the US has destabilized
the Middle East (i.e. the South).

While Brussels had its own reasons for accelerating TTIP
negotiations with Washington, US fears of Eurasian integration
hastened the sense of urgency Washington felt in concluding TTIP
negotiations to solidify its influence over the EU. The sanctions (economic warfare) against the Russian
economy, the drop in energy prices prompted by the flooding of
oil markets, and the drop in the value of the Russian ruble are part of this
Rubik’s Cube too.

The Common Economic Space is an aspiration for a Eurasian-wide
trade zone. As an ambition Moscow and its EEU partners see the
Common Economic Space as a framework to gradually incorporate
other Eurasian regions together. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister
Vasily Nebenzya confirmed all this to the Tass news agency in an
interview published on December 31, 2014. Nebenzya told Tass that
Moscow views the long-term goal of EU-EEU cooperation “as the
basis of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the
Pacific” in Eurasia.

Not only would any trade agreement between the EU and the EEU be
the basis for the Common Economic Space, it would be the embryo
for a broader Eurasian-wide trade zone that has the potential to
include the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), the
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). A
compartmentalized supranational bloc could emerge.

From a Russian perspective, instead of prioritizing the TTIP with the US, it makes more sense for the
EU to look at creating the framework for cooperation with the
EEU. This sentiment has been reflected by Moscow’s ambassador to
the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, who told the EU
Observer in an interview published on January 2 that Moscow
wanted to start contacts between the EU and EEU as soon as
possible and that the EU sanctions on Russia should not prevent
dialogue and contact between the two blocs. “We might think
of a free trade zone encompassing all of the interested parties
in Eurasia,” Ambassador Chizhov explained as he described the
“Russia-led bloc as a better partner for the EU than the US”
during the interview. As Chizhov rhetorically asks, the question
that the EU needs to think over is thus: “Do you believe it is
wise to spend so much political energy on a free trade zone with
the USA while you have more natural partners at your side, closer
to home?”

Is the EU waking up?

Ambassador Chizov’s question has not fallen on deaf ears. The
same questions are being asked in various EU capitals. The
leaders of EU powers are realizing that the US is instigating a
conflict with the Russians that Washington wants them to fight
and waste resources on that would weaken the EU and Moscow to
Washington’s benefit. Smaller EU powers have been vocal about
this while the larger ones have been slower in realizing it.

Greece refused to fall in line when the EU released a statement
blaming Russia for the eruption of the fighting in the East
Ukrainian city of Mariupol on January 24, 2015. Athens refused to blame Moscow and complained that
the EU acted undemocratically by not even following its own
procedures by asking for the consent of all members before
releasing a statement on behalf of the collective. Instead of
confrontation with Russia, the Greek government wants closer ties
with Moscow.

President Putin’s February 2015 visit to Budapest ruffled
feathers in the EU and US. Hungary has been vocal in itsopposition to the EU sanctions against
Russia. This has outraged some in the Washington Beltway and
European Commission. A diplomatic row even started between
Budapest and Washington when US Senator John McCain called
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a “neo-fascist dictator” because Hungary refused
to cut ties with Russia in 2014.

While there has been speculation that Hungary is being used as
the “good cop” to bargain with Moscow, the US has even
gone as far as banning members of the Hungarian government
from entering US territory on October 20, 2014. Although the EU
would react collectively if any country slapped diplomatic
sanctions on one of its members, Brussels effectively did not
respond to Washington.

Cypriot Present Nicos Anastasiades has joined the revolt against
Brussels and Washington by visiting Moscow on February 25, 2015. Nicosia
and Moscow even signed an agreement allowing the Russian Navy to
use Cypriot ports.

Germany and France—once mocked as “old Europe” by
Pentagon honcho Donald Rumsfeld— are having second thoughts too.
Franco-German differences with the US emerged at the Munich
Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel when German
Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuffed members of the US and British
delegations about a military solution for Ukraine. In this
context, Paris and Berlin rehashed the Kremlin’s original peace
proposal for East Ukraine and began diplomatic talks in Moscow.

Merkel casually also mentioned she supported a Common Economic
Space too: a sign of things to come?

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.